Digital rights issues don’t always get the crowds out onto the streets - but
it does happen. This Saturday, Germans will be
demonstrating
under the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin against the rise of the surveillance
state in that country - including the German implementation of the EU’s Data
Retention Directive, an EU-wide
law that compels ISPs and phone companies to track and stockpile every user’s
call, email destination and web-access for later access by law enforcement.

The Data Retention directive was passed by the European Parliament in 2005:
all the countries of the European Union were supposed to implement it in
national law by last week. Few have; and, country by country, the resistance
against this ill-concieved piece of legislation is growing.

Germany has, like the U.S., a Supreme Court that can declare
national legislation unconstitutional: it is yet undecided whether the court can
challenge European Union law. That’s what Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung
is seeking to discover in their complaint. It’s a legal showdown that could shake implementations of the directive in
many other countries in Europe, as well as change how future directives might
be permitted to undermine established civil liberties.

In the United States, the recent resignation of ex-Attorney Alberto Gonzalez have put his
plans to steer data retention
legislation
to the US on the backburner. These popular moves against the
European data retention regime should give his replacement serious pause
before following Europe’s lead.